JUST BEAR WITH ME…

…maintains that each of us has powerful and interesting stories to tell.

WHAT IS Just Bear With Me…?

This is where I tell stories with data, often using tales from my own life to provide context. My story-telling style – call it “annotated meandering” – inspired this site’s name. Just bear with me…I do get to the point.

The cover photograph shows the Vale Rio Diner, which used to sit at the intersection of Routes 23 and 113 in Phoenixville, PA. It appears prominently here.

This is also where I promote and sell my books, starting with Interrogating Memory: Film Noir Spurs a Deep Dive Into My Family History…and My Own.

Here is what some folks I respect say about it:

David Mayhew: “Greatly have I enjoyed your new book, which kept me glued! It all flows well. Film noir is a real fetching theme! What an expert and connoisseur you are!”

Larry Harnisch: “It’s a good one!”

Morgan Richter: “I am enjoying it immensely.”

I also promote other brilliant storytellers, because we creators need to support each other.

Matt Baume makes entertaining, intelligent and thought-provoking videos about queer representation in mass media. Here is his excellent recent book. Similarly, Jarred Corona pours out his heart in every queer-themed video he produces, doing so with insight and integrity.

If you grew up in the 1980s, you will love Richter‘s When Gen X Ruled the Multiplex series. It is like chatting with an old friend about movies.

Robin Bailes of Dark Corner Reviews mixes in-depth analyses of classic horror films with short streaming reviews and hysterical looks at truly awful horror films. Yes, he went here.

Polyphonic and Trash Theory make the best videos about the history of pop music I have ever seen.

The struggles of Matt Murray of Corn Pone Flicks with the absurd and arcane copyright rules of YouTube are legendary. His David Lynch analysis videos rank among the best.

Nick Hodges carefully separates fact from fiction in historical movies on his HistoryBuffs channel, while the folks at Kurzgezagt tell beautiful animated stories about, well, everything. The 1920s Channel shares my passion for this transformative decade.

FuzzCulture makes insightful videos about the modern world’s active suppresion of creativity.

While the husband and wife team in The House of Tabula (formerly The Cinema Cartography) can be a bit pretentious, few are as passionate and knowledgeable about film as an art form. Shoutouts also to Be Kind Rewind, Cinema Cities, Cinematic Century Chronicle, Thomas Flight, Adriana Oister, PolterGibbst and Patrick H Willems.

Do I agree with everything these creators say? Of course not. But they do the hard work to back up their insights and opinions, they are wholly original (no AI slop here), and I applaud and respect that.

THE BLOG

Since my YouTube channel is my only social media outlet, when I have something brief to say, I will put it here. Older entries may be found here.

May 21, 2026: I have thoroughly updated the rankings, and ensuing analysis, of my 100 favorite tracks, albums and musical artists. No massive suprises, other than Thomas Dolby and Suzanne Vega – now my favorite (solo) female artist – vaulting into the top 100. I also added more tracks and albums to the top 100 artist table.

March 27, 2026: But for a short Introduction, I have written a full first draft of The West Philadelphia Story: An Immigrant Jewish Journey Given how much I have already edited, it is very close to a final draft.

I now welcome suggestions regarding literary agents and/or publishers.

BOOK WRITING UPDATES

[As of May 21, 2026] I have essentially finished writing and editing The West Philadelphia Story: An Immigrant Jewish Journey (“TWPS”). While I end the book with my in utero adoption in July 1966, Chapter 9 (They Met in West Philadelphia) presents the lives and brief meeting of my genetic parents, while an Epilogue finishes the stories of key family members introduced in the first eight chapters.

The biggest hurdles were having my legal older sister genetically-tested through Ancestry.com.Analyzing Mindy’s DNA confirmed hypothesized relationships among my Berger ancestors, while revealing new relatives and one extraordinary fact: my great-great-grandfather Shmuel Mayer Berger did not die in the Pale of Settlement in the mid-1890s as I had speculated. He immigrated to Philadelphia in 1922, at the age of 80, after the death of his wife Esther Kunich and the October 1919 murder of his eldest son Louis in Bucks County, PA. Samuel Berger died in 1931 at the age of 89. The Associated Press reported he was 103 years old, but records from Pruzhany, in what is now Belarus, disprove this. In the meantime, careful exploration of passenger manifests and Russian tax records led me to rewrite the story of my maternal great-grandfather Jacob Gurmankin – who came from Odessa, not Kherson, as I mistakenly wrote here. Many questions answered, though some remain.

Over the next few weeks, I will once again seek a literary agent – or go directly to publishers, depending how much the rules of engagement have changed in five years. I suspect TWPS is a very good fit for the University Presses at the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University. The latter was where my father, aunt, uncle, first cousin and a friend all matriculated.

As of May 2026, meanwhile, I plan to call the final book in the “interrogating memory” trilogy Meet Me at the Counter: Tales of a GenX Idiosyncrat (“MMC”). Emerging themes of MMC are a sense that it is never “too late,” that one needs to trust one’s instincts and personal style, that there is no single “correct path.” Embrace your unique self – and invent words like “idiosyncrat.”

MMC will likely be heavily informed by the specific psychology of Early GenX (Americans born between 1965 and 1972). We are the quiet, hard-to-faze problems solvers – the latchkey kids who learned to fend for themselves when nuclear annihilation seemed not just possible, but probable. Compared to that, everything else is merely “a thing to be done, and done well.”

But perhaps this is why I am struggling to start writing this book in a systematic way. Writing about my childhood is one thing. Writing about my adulthood – why I left Harvard ABD in 1995, the good and bad years with the woman my wife Nell calls “my first wife,” the tumultuous years in Philadelphia (2001-05) and the disheartening end of my time at the Boston University School of Public Health – demands a far more intense, public-facing introspection. It is one thing to do that in the occasional 4,000-word essay. It is another thing entirely to do that in a full-length book without sounding preachy, braggadocious or gloomy.

This is why I still plan to center MMC in a series of visits to a wide range of highly informal, preferably open 24/7, restaurants: diners, family restaurants and the undefinable in-between. Maybe a bar or two. There is no problem that cannot be solved over coffee and a tuna melt at 2 in the morning.

Thoughts, aid and advice are welcomed!

[As of April 2025] Rather than revise Interrogating Memory (“IM”), I intend to write two new books – essentially forming an IM trilogy. The first, which draws from the first four chapters of IM, is The West Philadelphia Story: An Immigrant Jewish Journey (“TWPS”). TWPS focuses entirely on my Jewish ancestors, from their late-19th century migrations from the Pale of Settlement through my private adoption in 1966. It is another love letter to Philadelphia and my Jewish heritage, reminding us of the vital role immigrants played – and continue to play – in the economic and social well-being of the United States. The title riffs on the play and film The Philadelphia Story, which my mother, born Elaine Kohn in 1938, thought reflected life on the other side of nearby City Avenue.

The second book revises and extends my own life, focusing on my Early GenX status, the burdens of expectations, and the need to forge one’s own path…all while enjoying the fare at a wide range of diner, family restaurants and anywhere else one can sit down with a cup of coffee and bite to eat late into the night, if not all night. A working title is Meet Me at the Counter: Tales of A GenX Idiosyncrat.

WHO AM I?

Click here to learn about Matt (aka Dr. Noir).

WHAT ELSE WILL YOU FIND HERE?

The Noir of Who: Classic Film Noir’s Imprint on the Resurrected Doctor Who

Disease Testing Worksheet

WHAT DO I ASK FROM READERS?

Please continue to bear with me, while inviting others to do the same. I am grateful to everyone who clicks “Like” and comments in a respectful way. It truly is possible to disagree without being disagreeable.

And if you enjoy what you read here, please consider making a donation. Simply select a “quantity” of $1 payments equal to the amount you wish to donate. For example, to make a $5 donation to Just Bear With Me, you would select “5” under “Quantity.” I adopted this Rube Goldberg method because Stripe stopped processing payments to Just Bear With Me on October 23, 2024 for…reasons.

Thank you again to everyone who visits this website! I value every single view.

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HOW CAN YOU CONTACT ME?

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